NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Might 06 (IPS) – A bunch of youngsters taking part in an immersion program in Náhuat, the language of the Pipil individuals and the one remaining pre-Hispanic language in El Salvador, are the final hope that the language is not going to die out.
“This effort goals to maintain Náhuat alive and that’s the reason we deal with the youngsters, for them to proceed and protect this necessary a part of our tradition,” Elena López advised IPS throughout a brief snack break for the preschoolers she teaches.
López is a part of the Náhuat Cuna mission, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language by means of early immersion. She is certainly one of two lecturers who educate it to kids between the ages of three and 5 at a preschool heart in Nahuizalco, a municipality within the division of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.
Prone to disappearing
“When a language dies, the premise of indigenous cultures and territories turns into extinct with it,” says the report Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, in accordance with which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a scenario of larger or lesser menace or danger.
In Mesoamerica, which incorporates Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 75 indigenous languages are spoken, says the research by the Fund for the Improvement of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).
Excluding Mexico, Guatemala is probably the most linguistically various on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Probably the most broadly spoken is Okay’iche’, of Mayan origin, and the least is Xinca, of unknown origin.
Brazil is probably the most ethnically and linguistically various nation in Latin America, with between 241 and 256 indigenous peoples and between 150 and 186 languages.
Round 25 p.c of those languages are prone to extinction except one thing is urgently carried out, the report warns. It’s estimated that Latin America is dwelling to greater than 50 million individuals who self-identify as indigenous.
“These languages are shedding their utilization worth…households are more and more interrupting the pure intergenerational transmission of the languages of their elders, and a sluggish however certain strategy of shifting in the direction of the hegemonic language is noticed, with audio system making Spanish or Portuguese their predominant language of use,” the report states.
The causes of the hazard of the disappearance of those Amerindian languages are various, the report factors out, such because the interruption of intergenerational transmission, when the language is now not handed on from era to era.
And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna mission goals to revert by specializing in younger kids, who can study from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their mother and father and grandparents and communicate it fluently.
López is certainly one of these individuals. She belongs to the final era of audio system who acquired it naturally, as a mom tongue, talking it from a really younger age together with her mother and father and grandparents, in her native Santo Domingo de Guzmán, additionally within the division of Sonsonate.
“That is how I used to be born and grew up, talking it at dwelling. And we by no means stopped talking it, amongst my sisters and brothers, however not with individuals outdoors the home, as a result of they discriminated in opposition to us, they handled us as Indians however in a derogatory means, however we by no means stopped talking it,” stated Lopez, 65.
Certainly, for causes of racism and classism, indigenous populations have been marked by rejection and contempt not solely from the political and financial elites, but additionally by the remainder of the mestizo or mixed-race inhabitants, which resulted from the combination of indigenous individuals with the Spaniards who began arriving in Latin America within the sixteenth century.
“They’ve all the time appeared down on us, they’ve discriminated in opposition to us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite trainer on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, advised IPS.
And she or he added: “I really feel happy and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”
Each López and Cortez stated they have been grateful that the mission employed them as lecturers, since that they had no prior instructing expertise, and in a context wherein discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it tougher to seek out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the mission, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which are positioned over a wooden fireplace to cook dinner corn tortillas. She additionally bought baked items, and continues to bake bread on weekends.
López additionally labored making comales and making ready native dishes, which she bought in her neighborhood. Now she prefers to relaxation on the weekends.
All is just not misplaced
When IPS visited the Náhuat Cuna preschool in Nahuizalco, the three-year-olds have been performing an train: they stood in entrance of the remainder of the category of about ten kids and launched themselves by saying their first title, final title and different primary greetings in Náhuat.
Later they recognized, in Náhuat, footage of animals and components of nature, similar to “mistun” (cat), “qawit” (tree) and “xutxit” (flower). The scholars began their first yr within the heart in February, and can spend two years there.
The five-year-olds are probably the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty kids.
On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they’ll go to common college in Spanish, with the danger that they’ll neglect what they’ve realized. Nonetheless, to maintain them related to the language, the mission affords Saturday programs the place they start to study grammar and learn how to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, principally women, who began in the beginning of the mission and communicate the language fluently, and a few even educate it on-line.
The initiative is promoted by the Don Bosco College of El Salvador, and supported by the municipalities the place they function, in Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The Santa Catarina Masahuat department will even be reopened quickly.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán is dwelling to 99 p.c of the nation’s few Náhuat audio system, who quantity round 60 individuals, Jorge Lemus, director of El Salvador’s Náhuat/Pipil Language Revitalization Program and predominant promoter of the Náhuat Cuna mission, advised IPS.
“In three a long time I’ve seen how Náhuat has been in decline, and the way the individuals who communicate it have been dying out,” pressured Lemus, who can be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the Faculty of Languages and Schooling at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.
In keeping with the tutorial, the final three indigenous languages in El Salvador within the twentieth century have been Lenca, Cacaopera and Náhuat, however the first two disappeared by the center of that century, and solely the final one survives.
“The one one which has survived is Náhuat, however barely, as there are maybe simply 60 audio system of the language. After I began engaged on this there have been about 200 and the quantity continues to shrink,” stated Lemus.
The one option to hold the language alive, he stated, is for a brand new era to choose it up. But it surely is not going to be adults, who may study it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it should be a bunch of youngsters who can study it as native audio system.
The knowledgeable clarified that, though they arrive from the identical linguistic trunk, the Náhuat spoken in El Salvador is just not the identical because the Nahuatl spoken in Mexico, and actually the spelling is totally different.
In Mexico, Nahuatl has multiple million audio system within the Central Valley, he stated.
In El Salvador, in 1932, the Pipil individuals stopped talking their language in public for concern of being killed by the federal government forces of Normal Maximiliano Hernández, who that yr brutally cracked down on an indigenous and peasant rebellion demanding higher dwelling circumstances.
At the moment, society was dominated by aristocratic households devoted to espresso cultivation, whose manufacturing system plunged a big a part of Salvadorans, particularly peasants and indigenous individuals, into poverty.
Lemus argued that for a language to make a decisive comeback and change into a car for on a regular basis communication would require a titanic effort by the State, much like the revival of the Basque language in Spain, Maori in New Zealand and even Israel’s resuscitation of Hebrew, which was already a lifeless language.
However that’s not going to occur in El Salvador, he stated.
“Probably the most practical factor we need to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new era of Náhuat-speaking individuals to develop and multiply. If now we have 60 audio system now, in a couple of years we are going to hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new era, and they’ll hold it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he stated.
For her half, López needs to proceed working in the direction of this aim so as to go away the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool trainer stated: “I actually like instructing this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I need the youngsters to study and communicate it when I’m lifeless.”
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